


Written In Our Blood

by Bohemienne, TheDrunkSoldier



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Sex, Brainwashing, Captain America: The First Avenger, Captain Hydra, Curing brainwashing through the power of blowjobs, Dubious Consent, Dubious Consent Due To Identity Issues, Gen, Hydra Steve Rogers, M/M, Not Secret Empire Compliant, Oral Sex, Torture, fuck you nick spencer, handler/asset
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-08
Updated: 2017-06-08
Packaged: 2018-11-11 07:15:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 13
Words: 16,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11143485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bohemienne/pseuds/Bohemienne, https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDrunkSoldier/pseuds/TheDrunkSoldier
Summary: The sergeant falls.His captain follows.========Created for the Cap Reverse Big Bang 2017. Not related to Secret Empire--fuck you Nick Spencer.





	1. 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written to accompany TheDrunkSoldier's incredible artwork of a Steve who's been brainwashed by Hydra! **Please check tags.** Dubious consent issues abound.
> 
> ===
> 
> So I'll be honest, as excited as I was about writing this as an AU to accompany TheDrunkSoldier's gorgeous art, the whole Secret Empire garbage fire left a sour taste in my mouth. ([I also maybe wrote a whole lot about it.](http://womenwriteaboutcomics.com/2017/05/02/the-captain-america-we-need/)) But ultimately I decided the best antidote to canonical Nazi Steve was AU brainwashed Steve and Bucky healing through the power of blowjobs.
> 
>  
> 
> ~[The Drunk Soldier](http://curry-ketchup.tumblr.com) & [Bohemienne](http://starandshield.tumblr.com)

 

 

He awakens to a world gone watery, gray, his skin clammy and his lungs too tight as he gulps down air. He is never alone when he wakes up—there are always the guards, the doctors, and as they go through their procedure he knows it’s one he’s been through a thousand times, can feel it like an old scar on his skin, a song he can’t forget, and yet he can’t see the notes of this song coming until they’ve already arrived. Everything is on the tip of his tongue.

Everything is—

And then, the chair.

In the spaces between the pain, in the hitched breath between electricity arcing and his blood turning to lightning, he sees it. A man. (Two men.) A life. (Entwined.) A cause. But the lightning crowds everything out and the pain pulls him down its throat. It’s like being reborn, and he wonders if this, too, is a thought he has every time. If this, too, is the song he always sings. But he can never be quite sure, and so he always thinks—maybe this is the first.

And then that voice.

That voice pushes wet hair back from his face and stills the twitch in his muscles. That voice soothes every pain and brushes away all these stray thoughts, these desperate thoughts. He listens to that voice, at once stern and silky soft, and he knows that there is nothing else he could want or need.

That voice. Ten words. And then there is nothing else except his name.

“Soldier.”

He looks up into eyes as harsh as winter: blue eyes for which he’d gladly freeze.

“I am ready to comply.”

The man smiles. There’s a ghost of a dimple, right beside one of his moles, and the soldier wonders how it might feel to touch it—but then the thought is gone. The man picks up a folder and opens it before him, spreads it beneath the pattern on his uniform—the red bars over his black-clad chest and in the center, their mark.

“We have a new mission, soldier,” his captain tells him. “This one’s for you and I.”

 

*

 

It started—

It had a start. A time before this endless loop.

He was broken, crumpled, freezing to death, but he could barely feel it as his blood melted the snow around him and turned his thoughts to haze. _Steve_ turns to crystals in the air as he calls out. _Steve. Please._

Voices. Movement. Darkness. Pain.

There’s a dead weight hanging from his left shoulder. Heavy. _Heavy._ He tries to move his left fingers but there’s nothing there. He’s in the dark, a wet metallic smell all around him, and an insistent throbbing in his head.

“Soldier,” a voice says.

He stands—tries to stand—and crumples to his knees, the weight on his left side pulling.

“Soldier. Who are you?”

“I’m Sergeant—” His voice breaks, ragged from disuse. How long since he fell screaming? How long since he cried out for Steve? How long since he felt Steve’s warmth at his side, their limbs entwined, mouths charting out secrets across each other’s skin? “—Sergeant Barnes. US Army, 107th—”

“No.”

The blast of freezing water hits him square in the chest. He falls backward with a strange metallic clatter. His clothes—rags, really—are instantly soaked. So heavy. There’s a dim light somewhere off in the distance; he can finally make out outlines and shapes. As he twists his head to the left, something silver gleams.

“Who are you?”

“S—” His teeth clatter. “Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes—”

And then the water is choking him again, up his nose, down his windpipe, frost spreading like a spiderweb in his lungs. He shivers and curls into a ball, the hunk of metal on his left dragging, awkward as he tries to move.

“Again.”

 

*

 

Sleep becomes a distant memory. As soon as he starts to drift, as soon as he thinks he sees Steve waiting for him on the other side of his eyelids, a bright, sunny Brooklyn day and ice creams for them both—

The hose.

Or the blaring sirens.

Or the faceless men with whips and chains and batons.

Over and over. They ask him the same thing.

He drifts; his body goes numb, pushing away the pain. He clings to memories, to a name, but those, too, are turning gray.

Sergeant.

A sergeant.

A soldier.

 

*

 

It’s been months, maybe, and then he can’t remember a time when there was anything but this. There will always be this, over and over. When they aren’t beating him, aren’t demanding he answer the way they want him to answer, there is the record that plays. _Hail Hydra._ _You are to be the fist. Security and order for all._

Hail Hydra. When he sleeps—half-sleeps—the words thread through everything, infectuous words and pictures. There’s a man’s face, soft and warm, but his skin shrivels back until he’s nothing but a grinning, bloody skull. Hail Hydra.

Who is he?

—A soldier.

What else is there for him to be?

 

*

 

Sometimes, there are lessons. Sometimes, there are fights. The metal arm dangling from his left shoulder is activated and he learns to move, to think with it. Hydra’s tenets, Hydra’s orders flow through his blood now, because what else could there be?

Sometimes, there are distant screams, and they spark something in the back of his mind that he can’t name. Familiar but yet not.

He is the soldier.

He will serve Hydra well.

 

*

 

They bring him a man.

The first one has a black cloth bag over his head. It may not even be a man, for all he can see; just a human shape, smelling of desperation and human waste. He shoots the man without thought, because this is what has been asked of him, this is what it means to survive: to follow the path that has been prescribed.

The next man talks, resists. Though his hands are bound, he struggles, but the knife stills him fast enough. And more and more and more.

There is a man with no bag, this time. With blue eyes that chill him through. Gold hair that glints like something he’s forgotten. This man, he shoots between those hateful eyes.

“A true soldier,” the distant voice coos, and then there is a hand, reaching out to him. He goes very still. What is it to be touched? To feel human? It’s something he can’t recall.

He tilts his head forward, straining for those fingertips. How nice, to think there is a living, breathing thing in this world that he doesn’t have to kill.

But then they’re gone.

 

*

 

_Hydra is order._

_Hydra is strength._

_Hydra is pain._

_The soldier obeys._

 

*

 

“Congratulations, soldier.”

He sits in the shadows, disassembling the sniper rifle they have given him. They don’t lock his cell door anymore, if they ever did. Is it a cell, or simply a room? He’s had no need to leave it that he can recall.

“You are going to perform great works for us. Now that the governments of old have fallen.”

The soldier places the rifle’s stock on the towel spread before him and looks up at last. Two figures block out the light as it spills from the door. The lead guard—the one who oversaw his training, who’s coaxed him to become the man he was always meant to be.

“We have new assignments for you. Valuable tasks as we unite the rest of the world under Hydra’s rule.”

He nods. This is what he has been trained for. This is his purpose: filling his chest like wind in a sail.

“But every brave soldier, every strong soldier—he needs a captain,” the man says. “Soldier, this is to be your captain now.”

The second man steps forward, and something hitches in the soldier’s breath. He’s massive—muscled—the dim lamplight caresses every curve and jagged cut of tissue of his shirtless chest. His eyes sting with frost, and his face is stern, unyielding. And yet—

And yet as he looks at the soldier, a ghost of a smile appears. Presses a dimple into his cheek, just beside his beauty mark.

The soldier remembers fingers stretching out to caress his cheek, and dimly, this is a thing he wants to do to this man. Just a brush of warmth. Just a touch of skin.

But that isn’t his purpose. It doesn’t belong.

The man steps closer toward him, the sharp muscles of his abdomen, his chest now clearly visible. And the soldier’s breath catches in his throat at those perfect squares of his pecs.

The mark of Hydra has been painted across them, vivid red, so bright he thinks for a minute it might be blood. His flesh arm twitches, wanting to reach up and touch it. The man glances down at his chest, briefly, and his cheeks darken, but then he looks up and holds the soldier’s gaze as firmly as if he’s gripping him by the throat.

The soldier can’t, won’t look away.

“Hello, soldier.” He smirks, just one side of his mouth. “I’m to be your captain.”

“My captain,” the soldier echoes. Order. Strength. Yes, he needs someone to obey. So he can do his work.

His captain raises his chin, still keeping his eyes locked on him, and a shiver runs down the soldier’s spine. The red paint glistens like a wound. “We have work to do.”


	2. 2

He awakens to his captain’s voice. He doesn’t remember much, but he remembers this: that voice, firm but steadying, and that face that might as well be his sunrise. His head is crammed with half-memories that might be dreams and might be real, but when his captain says his name— _Soldier_ —he knows he’s awake and alive. He knows he has a purpose once more.

“Resistance fighters,” his captain says. “They’ve barricaded themselves inside an old base, and they’re using the weapons cache there to fend us off. But you—”

His captain is face to face with him, leaning down so they’re at the same level. He smells like soap and springtime, and the soldier breathes it in. His skin is electric with the nearness to this man he so badly wants to please.

“You . . .” His captain backs away abruptly and turns from him. The soldier lets out his breath. “You’re singularly gifted at rooting them out.”

The soldier nods. Kill the resistance fighters. Please his captain. Do what he’s meant to do.

“I’ll be joining you,” his captain continues, and the soldier’s breath hitches. “We have to make sure they’re properly punished.”

 

*

 

The base is old, rusty, smelling like damp coins and some kind of memory just beyond the soldier’s field of view. He makes his way in through a ventilation shaft trailing from the base’s back, dropping off a short cliff. Someone had welded a metal grate over it, but the soldered joints aren’t much against the force of his metal arm. He shimmies his way through the pipe for ten minutes until he finds the control room from the blueprints. He connects a few cables and somewhere, far away, the back door opens for his captain and their crew.

The alarm sounds. But he is ready. He is always ready.

He is made for this: for his metal fist around one throat while he drives a knife into another. For the burst of gunfire in his ears in time with his heartbeat. Spot a target, assess for weakness, strike, kill. The resistance fighters never stood a chance.

It’s when the last body falls and the gunsmoke starts to thin and the hot blood on his face cools that the trouble begins.

It’s a whisper in the back of his head. Like someone’s reciting a prayer, but he can never quite identify it. Every time he tries to listen, it’s gone. Then it’s an ache in his body, in his muscles, even the metal one—an absence, when he needs pressure on them, like a tourniquet on a wound.

There is a silence that settles around him like a lead blanket—like a suit of armor. A hungry silence, heavy, pulling him into its gravity. He goes through his checks—corners, corridor, lines of sight—but all is silent. There’s nothing to do but wait. And the waiting makes the silence heavier. It sinks to the bottom and stirs up sediment.

Amidst the grit—names. Words. Had they been targets, other missions? But then they’re gone again. Images—a hand, a darkened hall. The sound of traffic far below, drifting through an open window on a breeze. He waits for them to settle; for his thoughts to solidify. He waits, trying to make sense of these thoughts, trying to hold onto them—

Someone darts down the corridor on silent feet: his captain.

The soldier draws himself up, thankful for the distraction. Opens his mouth, ready to give a mission report—

But his captain silences him with a finger to his lips. The soldier nods. His captain raises three fingers, then points down into the maze. Beckons the soldier to him, into a narrow bend in the corridor. Shield harnessed on his back, he slides into the bend and motions for the soldier to do the same.

They fit easily into the gap, shielded from the utility lights of the corridor, darkness settling around them. The shoulder’s right arm is inches from his captain’s, but he feels drawn closer and closer to him, like the same weight of silence is tipping them both down.

His captain looks at him, blue eyes a hard, steel gray in the shadows. It isn’t a stern look—he’d know if it were—but something open, careful. A reassurance, he thinks, that they’re safe. That they work together, no matter what.

It’s . . . _comforting_ , and the moment the soldier thinks it, thinks the word, his whole body flushes with a rush of something he hadn’t known he’d wanted. To be comforted. To be cared for.

His captain tips his head, curious, looking at him still. Despite himself, the soldier feels his lower lip begin to tremble. He feels small, vulnerable, but he isn’t afraid to be vulnerable, not with his captain, not where he’s comforted and safe.

The question in his captain’s eyes turns to a hand, upturned, leather fingerless gloves and backs of his fingers brushing away a dark lock of hair stuck to the soldier’s cheek.

The soldier sighs. _Sighs_. He wonders, in that moment, if anyone has ever touched him before. It is a streak of fire across his skin, and a hot bath he’s sinking into. He’s missed this—hasn’t he? There has to have been someone, sometime.

All he wants is that touch again.

But then there’s the squeak of rubber soles against concrete and he must snap back to himself. His captain shifts, too, face hardening to stone in an instant. The soldier is already sliding a knife into position in his left hand as he unholsters his sidearm with his right. He waits, lets the footsteps draw nearer.

As the gun rattles in his hand, as his blade finds resistance in warm flesh, he can forget. He doesn’t need to be needed. He doesn’t need anyone.

The heavy silence of the transport back to base, though, is another matter, and that weight strangles him, all the way to the chair, until lightning spreads its fingers in his mind and he can’t think anything at all.


	3. 3

“Good morning, Soldier.” Cap smiles at his soldier. He’s a sight to behold, even in this state—cold sweat and dark hair veiling his face, his mouth slack, his muscles still. He’s waiting, waiting so patiently for his captain’s command, and the raw potential in him sends a thrill down Cap’s spine, like the weight in his hand of a loaded gun.

He walks the soldier through their mission briefing, a raid on a house harboring refugees from Hydra’s global unification. Quick, tactical—it’ll be only the two of them this time, no need for the whole Strike squad. Cap will secure upstairs while the soldier deals with the refugees in the hidden basements. Quick and tactical, but it’s sure to send a message to all who’d oppose Hydra’s might.

Cap flies them to a drop site in the quinjet, his mind humming with the rightness of their task, the goodness of their cause. He remembers catching a glimpse of himself once—he can’t remember when it might have been, but he’s sure he remembers it—his skin bared and aglow before a mirror, his body sagging. But Hydra—it was Hydra’s mark, branded on him, that held him up. It gave him strength to go on.

(An interrogation. That must have been it. Did he survive an interrogation? All the missions blend together. But he did not break. He’d never break. Hail Hydra.)

His thoughts circle around the soldier seated behind him. On their last mission, there had been a moment when he looked at him and felt the pull of something more, something beyond his field of vision. He’d reached out— _idiot, what are you doing_ , he’d chided himself—as if by grasping the soldier’s face, he could grasp the thought, whatever it had been. But it had slipped away from them, and since then, he’s been caught up in the torrent of action, mission briefings, strategizing, plans. This is the first moment he’s sat still, and the fact the soldier sharing it with him twists at him like a pebble in his boot.

Who was the soldier? He catches himself wondering it, but it’s a silly question. After all, who was he? They are the same as they’ve always been: two men, two weapons of order and victory.

The same as they’ll always be.

 

*

 

Cap sweeps the downstairs easily: pins the woman in place with the shield while he finishes her husband with his sidearm. He’s supposed to read off a list of his crimes against Hydra, but he doesn’t see the point in it when in minutes, he’ll be dead. He dispatches the man’s wife in short order while he hears the sounds of automatic fire from the basement.

He heads upstairs to clear it out, make sure he isn’t missing anything or anyone. There’s a little girl’s bedroom, which makes him stop. He’s seen no sign of her in the house. A comic book lies open, face-down on her bed. _CAPTAIN AMERICA_ , it reads, and shows a man dressed like himself on the cover—only the colors are all wrong. Disgusting Resistance propaganda. Cap feels his temperature creeping up at the sight of it; he snatches it up and tears it in two, the sound of the paper vivid in the dead of the night—

And then a silenced pistol whistles over his shoulder.

He turns, shield already in hand, to find the soldier standing in the doorway, pistol leveled at the wooden slats of the girl’s closet door. A _whump_ against the wood, and then the door falls open as the girl’s body tumbles out.

Cap’s pulse hammers in his ears. He let his temper get the best of him, and missed the hiding place. No emotion—it’s what they ask of him. What he’s meant to do, but he let himself get angry.

“Thank you,” he says. There’s something pressing against his throat, some emotion he can’t name, urging him to say more, but he doesn’t know how to make words out of it.

The soldier’s head tilts up and he locks eyes with him, and for a second, a smile ghosts his lips. Like nothing could please him more than his captain’s praise. It makes Cap want to praise him again.

“We’re clear,” the soldier says again.

Cap nods, once, decisive, and swallows back down the wordless emotions. “Mission accomplished, then.” He reholsters the shield; tosses one last look at the torn comic pages. “Hail Hydra.”

 

*

The soldier is staring straight ahead, motionless in the smooth hum of the quinjet. Cap keeps checking over his shoulder, keeps looking at him, at those blue eyes like an icestorm that see everything and nothing at all.

After a few minutes, Cap glides the quinjet into autopilot. A few quick instrumentation checks. They’ve got about two hours until they’re back at base, toasting the defeat of more resistance trash. Until then, though, he’s off-duty; to remind himself, he unfastens the hooks at one shoulder of his uniform. The fabric folds forward, partially covering the red Hydra symbol stretched across his chest. With slow, cautious movements, he slides out of the pilot’s chair and moves to the empty passenger’s seat beside the soldier.

He can understand—he thinks he understands—the way the soldier is feeling right now. The silence can be yawning, sometimes, like a warm blanket after a long day defending righteousness and all he wants is to wrap himself in it. But too often, there are barbs lurking in the silence. Thoughts that are far easier to ignore when there’s gunfire, orders, shouting to occupy his mind. They poke and twist and prod in his head, and Cap would do anything to smother them down.

Words. Conversation. He needs to fill this yawning void. Anything to silence the rest.

And the way the soldier responded to him the last time he gave him praise—

“You did well today,” he says.

The soldier blinks, then slowly, head not moving, slides his gaze Cap’s way. Cap wants him to turn his head. Turn his body. He feels it like a hunger, deep and gnawing in his gut.

“Your quick thinking . . . it helped us both.” Cap’s leaning forward, a phantom gravity closing the space between their chairs. “Thank you.”

The soldier drops his gaze, and his head dips forward to stare at his hands in his lap. A faint whir of servomotors rises above the engine whine as his left hand’s fingers flex. “It is my honor to serve.”

“And you did so admirably.”

A dark lock of the soldier’s hair has dropped from behind his ear to obscure his face as he looks down. Cap’s hand is out before he realizes it; his fingers, clad in his leather fingerless gloves, flick out to tuck the hair back in place. The soldier tenses as Cap brushes his cheek.

He should pull away—he knows he should pull away now, pretend he doesn’t feel the soldier’s skin burning, pretend he doesn’t want to melt into it. But that would mean more silence. That would mean more thoughts.

He would do—anything—

Cap slides his thumb forward, sweeping across the soldier’s high, sharp cheekbones and then coming to rest along his nose. His palm cups the soldier’s stubbled cheek, the bristles a welcome roughness. And then—as Cap’s hand settles into place, as it becomes a caress—the soldier closes his eyes and _sighs._

Cap freezes. The sound does something to his chest—pulls at it like a needle pulling thread. It’s such a vulnerable sound, as if it’s the first time the soldier has ever come off-duty around him, and stitches itself into Cap, warm and inviting. Cap wants to hear it again, he wants to stare and stare at the soldier easing into his hand, as if all he’s ever wanted is to be appreciated, all he’s ever needed is for Cap to approve of his work. To touch him, caress him, make him feel like he has purpose beyond endless bloodshed.

And, oh, Cap wants him to feel it, too.

“Soldier,” Cap whispers, the word like a stone in his throat. He can’t hear anything but the rush of his own blood in his ears. His thumb traces back and forth against the soldier’s cheekbone, and the soldier’s mouth parts, his lips a vivid pink against his pallid skin.

Cap’s thumb dips lower, to drag against that plush pillow of the soldier’s lower lip. Though it’s barely noticeable, the soldier fits his mouth around the pad of Cap’s thumb, and another gust of warm air escapes his lips. Cap bends his thumb forward until it rests against the soldier’s damp tongue.

The soldier presses his tongue over Cap’s thumb and closes his lips.

Cap has to smother a pained gasp. His head is going fuzzy; all his feeling is centering on his hand where he touches the soldier. He’s unexpectedly aroused. His cock is stirring within the confines of his uniform, pressing against his sports cup. Through a dark fringe of lashes, the soldier is watching him, tongue still barely pressed against Cap’s thumb, and Cap can’t quite tell if he’s pushing at the boundaries of his orders or is asking for new ones.

But he’s all too happy to find out.

“You . . . you’ve done well, soldier.” Cap’s voice is husky, raspy with want. “And you should be rewarded.” He swallows. “Is that what you would like?”

The soldier looks at him a moment longer. The ice in those eyes has thawed somewhat, and Cap can’t stop staring at them. Slowly, the soldier nods, gaze dropping pointedly toward Cap’s lap, then he looks away shyly. Like he feels undeserving.

Cap lowers his hand with a shaky breath. His cock is throbbing now, painfully stiff inside all the layers of uniform. He has to do something. As he reaches for the fasteners on his uniform pants, he tells himself—this is okay. This is permitted. If it reinforces the soldier’s bond with him, allows them to work together . . . If it shoves away these thoughts, these images rattling around inside his head . . .

The soldier lets out a soft gasp as Cap finally unfastens the hooks. Cap closes his eyes and leans back, the relief overwhelming as he eases his cock free. The head is flushed deep scarlet, a pearl of precome glistening at the slit, and he gives himself a lazy stroke as he studies the soldier once more.

Then Cap leans forward and strokes the soldier’s cheek again.

“Is this what you’d like, soldier?”

The soldier nods, his eyes nearly black. Cap wonders, briefly, how it might feel to lose himself in those eyes.

“Then you’d better come get it.”

Cap’s heart lodges in his throat as the soldier slides, sinuous, to his knees. He’s got the grace of a panther, beautiful and terrifying. He knows damn well what the soldier’s capable of in the field. But he also knows the soldier would never act against him. He’s under no orders, though, to do this. Cap tells himself this. The soldier wants this. Craves it, with that sigh that sings straight to Cap’s marrow. And, god, but Cap wants so badly to give it to him.

The soldier crouches between Cap’s leg and rubs his cheek against one knee, eyes closed. Cap’s pulse is a dark drumbeat in his ears now. He reaches out and cups the back of the soldier’s head, still gentle, still careful with him, like anything more might break this strange spell. Eyes shut, the soldier works deeper between Cap’s legs. Mouths at the thick, far too thick fabric of the uniform just above Cap’s balls.

Cap shivers, the anticipation aching. The soldier looks up at him, and for a moment, just a moment, he almost looks like he knows he’s the one in control right now. But just as quickly, it’s gone.

And then he’s licking a slow, steady path up the length of Cap’s cock and Cap’s crying out, wrenching.

Cap settles back into himself after a few delirious moments and digs his fingers into the soldier’s scalp. “That’s it,” he murmurs. “That’s a good soldier.”

The soldier cups Cap’s balls with his right hand, the flesh one, and kneads them, the feeling just barely coming through the thick fabric. There’s a skill to his movements Cap wouldn’t have guessed at; he works as fluidly, as ruthlessly as he does in the field, his target clearly in mind.

And his target now, it seems, is driving Cap fucking crazy. Cap sucks in his breath as the soldier forms a ring around the base of Cap’s cock with his fingers and licks around the crown. He’s precise, but there’s an artfulness to his moves, and Cap wonders how he might move in other positions—how his mouth might taste on his own, how his hips might buck against Cap’s, what kind of sweet sounds he might make with that mouth that so rarely speaks—

But then he’s sinking his lips down on Cap’s shaft and Cap has to groan to steady himself. He’s on _fire_ , he’s delirious with the feel of that hot mouth on him, those long dark lashes fanning around the soldier’s eyes, with the utter fucking adoration on his face. He wants more and more of it.

Cap fists the soldier’s hair and _pulls_.

He’s rewarded with a snarl, a sound that spikes straight to his gut, that floods him with warmth and darkness and want. “That’s it,” Cap murmurs. “That’s good.”

The soldier curls his tongue around Cap’s cock and pulls him deeper down. Swallowing him. Taking his full length.

Cap curls his toes into fists in his boots as he tries to hold on, not ready to lose control just yet, but god, the soldier makes it almost impossible. His mouth is a vise, drawing on him, and Cap wants to weep with how good it feels, how badly he needed to fill this void in him, how the soldier must have needed it too—

And he’s coming, he’s lost in the soldier’s velvet lips and broken gaze, and in the white haze of his climax, someone’s whispering a name, someone’s holding him tight as white curtains flutter on a sea-salt breeze, but before he can hold onto the image it’s ripped from him again and there’s nothing but his overwhelming bliss.

He blinks once, twice. The soldier’s mouth is still on him, but gentle now, carefully easing off; drops of Cap’s come dot his lips—red now—but he takes his time in lapping them away. Cap can’t help the sob that wracks him at that sight, at the hint of plenty more lust in him yet to be fed.

Instead, he looks at the crotch of his uniform and gestures toward a tiny patch. “You missed a spot.”

The soldier—well, he doesn’t smile exactly. Cap isn’t sure he’s capable of that. But there’s something devious, clever on his lips as he takes his sweet time licking it away.

Cap’s still kneading at the soldier’s head, fingers tangled in his stringy dark hair, but he forces himself to stop.

This has to be all of it. They can’t be more than this. No matter how much the hollow in his chest aches and threatens to collapse. No matter how those gorgeous eyes turn on him.

But if it keeps his soldier happy, if it strengthens their bond—

If it keeps those sharp, angry thoughts at bay—

If he asks the technician to wipe the soldier before putting him under again—

Then surely there’s no harm.


	4. 4

His captain is looking at him: not coldly, not sternly, but with a question.

He doesn’t know what his captain might need to ask. They’re nearly concluded with their mission—the resistance is wiped out, their collaborators rounded up for questioning and execution. So the soldier assumes. He isn’t involved in that part. His work here is done and the barrel of his sidearm is growing cold where it rests against his thigh. His captain—maybe he has to take part in the questioning, the paperwork. He tries to remember if he’s done so in the past, but his mind runs up against that static wall.

He wishes he could remember more about his captain.

They reach the extraction point and a team is waiting for them. They peel his holsters away, his guns, his knives, his grenades. He’s exposed, shivering in the cold, and a noise escapes his lips that turns his captain’s head. Another question dancing in his eyes. The soldier swallows, ashamed, and looks away.

The static shifts; an image ghosts across it.

A hand. A hand, cupping his cheek, small and bony—no, it’s massive, it’s like a paw. Weak, watery sunlight trickles through a grimy window and spills across white sheets.

Gone again with a shove to his back. “Come on, come on, you know the drill.” A sharp, bitter laugh. “Well, maybe you don’t. Oh, who gives a shit.”

The soldier turns to find a weasel of a man grinning at him, his dark eyes hard with malice. A team member. His overgelled hair sticks up every which way. He gives the soldier another shove toward the back of the armored truck. With a tightness in his throat, the soldier turns and climbs inside, where the technicians are waiting to shackle him in.

“That isn’t necessary.”

His captain’s voice rings crisp in the cold air, and a shiver runs like a finger down his spine.

“Sorry, Cap. SOP.” He says each letter, _ess oh pee_ , like they should mean something. “What, you telling me you don’t chain him up on your solo runs?”

“I’m not saying I don’t,” his captain replies. “I’m saying it isn’t _necessary._ ”

The guy grunts. “Yeah, okay. You deal with him sometime when the wipe doesn’t take and he loses his shit. You’ll change your mind real fast.”

The soldier blinks and sees an image of his arms flying out, screams tearing out of his throat, words and thoughts bombarding him, embedding in him like shrapnel. Has he done these things?

He risks a glance at his captain, but the question, the softness in his expression is gone, and he’s all sturdy, stoic chin. Sweat pools at his temples, the only sign he’s just been through a battle at all. “Very well. Carry on.”

 

*

 

They strip him. Hose him. Peel back his lips and blast his gums and teeth. Trim the nails on his right hand and clean the grooves between the plates of his left. The handlers are methodical, cold, and it’s over in fifteen minutes. When they finish, he catches himself holding out his right hand, waiting for an IV, but the tech closest to him shakes his head and frowns.

“Not yet. Cap wants to talk to you.” He turns away, muttering to himself. “God knows why.”

His captain? His pulse flutters at his throat, and he has to force himself to breathe. Steady, steady, like lining up a shot. He sits, waiting, the static roaring now, threatening to swallow him whole. More forms reach for him from the noise, but the minute he tries to focus on him, they subside back into the noise.

The door clicks and his captain strides in and the soldier forgets to breathe for a minute.

His captain is fresh from the showers, too, his golden hair damp, a few lines of water tracing the grooves of his muscles against his too-tight white t-shirt. He looks at the soldier, eyes wide as if he’s forgotten why he’s here, but then recovers, lips curving, and turns to lock the door.

“Hello, soldier.”

The soldier raises his chin. He’s still sitting, shirtless. Yet he doesn’t feel exposed like he did before, when they took his weapons away. “Captain.” His throat aches with disuse. He doesn’t care. All he knows is that he’s waiting, hoping, pleading—

For what? But it swells up in his chest all the same, a need so strong it hurts.

“You did well today,” his captain says finally. He steps closer, and the soldier can’t help but look at the thick, muscled thighs bulging in his captain’s sweatpants. “As always.”

_As always . . . ?_ The soldier doesn’t quite understand, but immense relief washes over him all the same. He made his captain proud. He doesn’t want for much, but this—this he _needs_.

“I keep thinking . . .” his captain starts, but then shakes his head. “I want . . .”

_Want._ The word catches on the soldier’s skin and pulls.

His captain stops before him and rests one hand on the soldier’s shoulder. His right one. “I shouldn’t have favorites among my men. But you—you’re extraordinary.”

The soldier shivers. The touch is like an anchor, holding him in place. Holding him to himself. He leans into it. When was the last time someone touched him? He hadn’t realized how badly he needed it until now.

“I . . . _trust_ you,” his captain continues. “I think of you and I feel—”

“More,” the soldier whispers.

His captain’s grip falters, and for a moment he thinks he’s said the wrong thing. He’s going to be punished. The other men will come and they’ll scold him, they’ll beat him, they’ll chain him up just like they used to—( _when?_ his brain asks)—and then they’ll take him to the cold place again and he won’t see his captain, won’t have orders to obey—

But then his captain’s smile deepens. “Yes,” he says, the word slow and gentle as a caress. “I feel more around you.”

His captain darts his tongue across his lips and the soldier has to stifle a whimper. He is a beautiful sight. The soldier wonders when the last time was he found something beautiful. There’s a cold satisfaction he takes in a well-executed kill, but beautiful, it isn’t. His captain’s smile, though; his steely eyes and jaw in need of lips pressed against it—

A spark of shame flares in him. He isn’t supposed to think these things. Dully, he remembers—a series of images and a harsh slap if his eyes lingered on them too long. He remembers a beating one time when his thoughts wandered on a too-long mission, his thoughts caught on an image, when he slipped his right hand down his pants—

What images had he seen, then? What was he not supposed to think, to feel?

To the soldier’s horror, he feels a weight stirring between his legs, blood rushing to his groin, his shaft hardening. He chokes back a cry and curls back, afraid to meet his captain’s eyes.

“Shh.” His captain’s hand trails up his neck to cradle his jaw. “It’s all right, soldier.”

He nods, but the fear, the shame—those take time to fade. His captain rubs a slow circle on the soldier’s cheek with the pad of his thumb. Little by little, the tension leaves him, but his erection only grows. Maybe his captain won’t notice. Maybe, just maybe, he’ll understand.

“You deserve to be cared for, too,” his captain says. Some of the sternness has left his voice, but it’s as commanding as ever. A strong foundation for the soldier to rest on. He can’t imagine anything better. “Would you like me to take care of you?”

The soldier’s heart is lodged in his throat, but he manages a nod.

His captain’s smile deepens. “I’d like that very much, too.” One more stroke of his thumb against the soldier’s cheek, then he steps back. “Stand up.”

The soldier all but leaps to his feet. His captain laughs softly. There’s no hiding the soldier’s erection now as his captain paces around him, slowly, hand to his chin. It tents the front of his black BDUs. He feels light-headed, but does his best to stand at attention for his captain.

— _cky, god, you don’t know how long—_

Finally, his captain completes his circle and steps behind the soldier. The soldier longs to look back at him, look at that gorgeous grin that’s stretched his cheeks wide, but he wants to obey. Two hands trail down his back. Curl around his hips. The soldier sucks in his breath, but doesn’t dare move, make a sound. His captain’s hands carefully ease open his belt and the fly of his BDUs.

— _come on, sweetheart—_

A whimper escapes the soldier as his captain reaches into his pants and wraps one hand around his shaft. He becomes hyper aware of every sensation. Hot lips pressing against the side of the soldier’s neck, breath curling around his collarbone. His captain’s erection flush against the cleft of his ass. And his captain’s hand stroking lazily, pumping him—

“Do you still want this?” his captain asks. Breathy. Almost as if he’s afraid—but the soldier knows that can’t be true. His captain fears nothing.

“Yes,” the soldier says.

Teeth nip at his shoulder as his captain pumps him again, and instantly, the soldier loses himself in a rush of white heat. He lurches forward as he comes all over his captain’s hand. He’s going to fall. But his captain keeps his other hand wrapped around his torso, holding him upright.

“Shhh,” his captain whispers. “I’ve got you, soldier.”

The soldier sags forward. Sated. Relieved.

Carefully, his captain lowers him forward until he’s bent over a metal examining table, then, once he’s sure he’s secure, steps away to wash his hands. “Wait,” his captain says, and the soldier relaxes, a deep, full-body exhale leaving him. His body’s a little fuzzy, electric, and he wonders when the last time was that he felt this way. Making a perfect kill—that’s satisfying. But this feeling is something else.

Then his captain is behind him again, slipping cool, clean fingers under the back of his waistband. “You’re doing so good,” his captain murmurs. “Such a perfect soldier for me.”

Slowly, his captain eases his BDUs down over the curve of his ass and shoves them down around his knees. Keeping one hand firm against the small of the soldier’s back, there’s a rustle of fabric as he fishes something from the pocket of his sweatpants. A click and a squishing sound as an antiseptic scent fills the air. The soldier’s breaths quicken, but he trusts his captain. He trusts him with everything.

— _Stop squirming, I’m trying to—_

Suddenly his captain trails ice-cold fingers down the cleft of his ass, something chilly and liquid remaining. He parts the soldier’s cheeks, gently, then traces a careful circle around his hole. Another squirting sound, and then his captain is pressing something cold, jelly-like inside him and—

_Oh._ The soldier cries out as his captain’s finger pushes into him and his shaft stirs all over again.

His captain laughs softly, but doesn’t slow down, scooping up the liquid as it runs down toward the soldier’s thighs and pushing it back inside. “Do you like this?” he murmurs, curling his finger so it scrapes inside the soldier, and the soldier doesn’t know if he’s ever _liked_ anything, but this feeling, this cool shock of pleasure, _this—_

“More,” he cries.

His captain works two fingers into him, and it’s like an explosion of stars behind the soldier’s eyes. He’s dizzy with sights and sounds he’s never even seen, fleeting images dancing and warping in his mind, and there’s something familiar and entirely wonderful and new as his captain slides a third finger inside him.

“You’re doing so good,” his captain murmurs, leaning over him. “So good for me.”

The soldier’s face hurts with how hard he’s blushing, how pleased he is to make his captain proud. He’s hard again, his erection trapped against the cool metal table beneath him. All he can think of is how incredible his captain’s hands feel—on him, in him, near him. He doesn’t ever want it to end.

Another rustle of fabric, and suddenly an emptiness as his captain slips his fingers away. The soldier whines, confused. The emptiness stings.

“Don’t worry.” His captain clutches him by the hips again and lets his hot breath trail against the soldier’s shoulderblades. “I’m not leaving you.”

And then he pushes deep inside the soldier with a forceful thrust of his hips. The soldier’s holding his breath, he realizes; he’s overwhelmed with sensation, with the weight of his captain inside him, with how comfortable, how _right_ it feels, that he barely notices the way he’s gripping the table’s edge, the metal twisting and distorting in his left fist.

“That’s it, soldier.” His captain’s fingers dig in, bruising, around the soldier’s hips as he begins to rock into him in quick staccato thrusts. Each thrust sparks a new ember inside the soldier, searing, aching, the best sort of pain, and he thinks he could feel this pain forever, he thinks he’s never wanted anything more.

— _so good, sweetheart, I can’t believe—_

“You feel incredible,” his captain grunts. Just the _sound_ of his voice sends the soldier spiraling. Rough and stern and desperate. Desperate for _him_. He feels wanted, _needed_ , he feels something unfolding inside him and this time when he comes, he doesn’t try to stifle his cries, he just clenches around his captain and loses himself in the static that drags him under.

—White curtains fluttering as a figure crosses them, golden hair, sly grin, steady artist’s hands—

And then his captain is snarling, swearing, a fresh heat building inside the soldier. “Fuck,” he growls. “ _Fuck._ ” He thrusts once more into the soldier and stays there as warmth fills the soldier up. Tears sting the corners of his eyes. Slowly, his captain relaxes, and leans forward until his face presses against the soldier’s neck.

“Fuck,” he whispers again. “You feel like—”

_Home,_ the soldier thinks, but doesn’t dare say it out loud. He doesn’t know where the word came from, only that now he’s thought it, it refuses to leave his mind.

His captain pants a moment longer, tickling the nape of the soldier’s neck beneath his shaggy hair, then pushes himself up to standing. His sudden absence stings as warmth trickles down the soldier’s thighs.

There’s a long silence, and in it, the word _home_ swirls around in the soldier’s mind. Insistent. Jagged. Cruel. He has to crowd it out. Finally, he risks a glance back at his captain, but he’s just standing in the middle of the exam room, eyes squeezed shut and a mouth clamped over his hand.

“Captain?” the soldier whispers.

His captain startles. Backs away. For a moment, there’s a look in his eyes like one of the soldier’s targets, right as he’s about to make the killing blow. But then he’s all commanding presence and steadiness, despite the sweatpants shoved down to his knees and his softening cock. He studies the soldier with a coldness that hurts worse than a bullet wound.

“Get yourself cleaned up.” He gestures to a stack of towels in one of the exam room’s shelves. “The medics will be here soon.”

The soldier’s muscles twitch, anxious to obey, but he hesitates. There has to be more. His captain must hear it too, the things rattling around in his skull. “Captain?” he whispers.

But his captain’s expression only grows colder. He thrusts his chin out. Narrows his eyes.

Then turns and leaves the room.


	5. 5

Commander Pierce is waiting for Cap when he returns from a peacekeeping mission. Rioters tried to take control of one of the checkpoints spread around the capital, but Cap was able to quickly put them down. It’s been—how long has it been?—Cap can’t be sure how long it’s been since Hydra solidified global control, but they have less and less need for him lately. Sometimes he goes to cryo just so he can sleep.

He steps inside the briefing room and folds his hands behind his back. “Commander.”

Pierce looks him over with a displeased twist to his lips. Ever since Supreme Commander Schmidt traveled off-world to spread Hydra’s reach, Pierce has been more or less in charge, and nothing Cap has done ever seems good enough for him. Cap finds it almost refreshing, in a way; it’s nice for there to be one person, at least, who won’t pepper him with endless, vacuous praise. But it also unsettles him. As if Pierce knows something that no one else, even Cap himself, can see.

“Captain.” Pierce doesn’t stand; just leans forward to reach for his tumbler of scotch. “It’s been some time.”

“Has it?” Cap asks. He loses track of the days and years. Reach back far enough and he can’t remember anything at all.

“You’ve been putting yourself into cryo more and more. Anytime we don’t have need for you . . . or for the Soldier.”

A warning bell sounds in the back of Cap’s head. “The longer I’m around, the longer I can serve Hydra, right?”

“Sure.” Pierce takes a gulp. “But that isn’t why you do it.”

Cap’s jaw tightens. He has no response.

“You’re too soft with him,” Pierce says, leaning back in his leather chair. He slings his arms over the back and looks out the window at the city of New Berlin spread below them. “And it makes you soft, as well.”

There’s no question who Pierce means. Cap eases from his military rest and walks to the floor-to-ceiling window. Anything’s better than meeting Pierce’s cunning stare. “He . . . he’s a good soldier,” he says carefully. “Obedient. Dependable.”

_He stretches out on the cheap boxspring mattress, blue eyes dazzling. “C’mon, sweetheart—”_

Cap flinches. When he opens his eyes, he’s staring at his own reflection in the glass, but he barely recognizes it. The black and red of his uniform, the flatness of his stare.

Pierce laughs to himself. “Come on, Captain. You know that’s not what I mean.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, then.” But he answers too quickly.

“Do I have to spell it out, Cap? I know what you do with him. No—” He holds up a hand as Cap turns to protest. “Don’t. Don’t insult me by denying it.”

Cap hooks his thumbs into the belt of his uniform. If he doesn't put his hands somewhere, they’re going to curl themselves into fists.

“We all have our vices.” Pierce rattles the ice in his glass. “Whatever you need to do to blow off steam, fine. I understand. Your work is a gift, and I’d like to keep it that way.”

“Sir,” Cap mumbles, by way of acquiescence. He doesn’t know what else to say.

“But I have two requests.”

A stone sinks in Cap’s gut. “Of course, Commander.”

Pierce snorts. “First of all—first of all. Whatever this _thing_ is you have for the asset—it doesn’t leave the barracks, all right? No one can know.” He narrows his eyes. “Word of Captain Hydra’s preferences gets out, and I’ll put the bullet in the asset’s head myself.”

Cap strangles back a cry.

“Secondly. You’re too soft with him.” He takes another drink, watching Cap over the lip of the glass. “It makes him . . . weak. It makes you both pliant. There’s a chain of command, you understand, and it has to be obeyed.”

“I—I’m not sure I follow, sir.”

Pierce raises one eyebrow. “You need to put him in his place. Remind him who’s in charge. He’s your subordinate, Cap, and the minute he thinks he’s your equal, well, you’ve just screwed us all.”

Cap shakes his head. “But sir, he’s—I mean, I don’t want—”

“Did I give you an order, Cap, or did I give you a fucking order?”

Cap recoils with a metallic taste in his mouth. “Yes, sir.”

“Good. We won’t have this conversation again.” Pierce picks up a folder sitting on the table before him and flicks it open. “Don’t make me have to handle this my way.”

“I won’t, sir.” Cap clicks his heels together as he salutes, knowing a dismissal when he sees one, and makes it out the door before the tears can needle at the corners of his eyes.

 

*

 

All too soon, he’s back out in the field with the soldier, the weight of the commander’s words like a stone crushing his chest. The soldier is as eager to please him, to do his job well, as ever, but every time he looks at Cap, Cap sees the barrel of Pierce’s gun pressed up against his temple. And then, the look on the soldier’s face—confusion crossed with hurt—

And then it happens. It’s no one’s fault, but the soldier will take the blame for it. A missed shot, a resistance leader narrowly escaping, vanishing down an alleyway and into whatever underground nest the filthy rebels have set up. How many decades since Hydra won the war? And still the resistance festers, still they defy the High Commander’s rule. And now they’ll grow and grow because the soldier’s bullet failed.

Soft.

Pliant.

Cap clenches his jaw and knows what he must do. For the soldier’s sake, if not his own.

 

*

 

They sit in the prep room, alone, Cap in a chair, the soldier on the medical table, legs dangling over the edge. It’s become a routine, though Cap has no idea how much the soldier remembers. If any of it. His willingness, though, his complete and utter desperation for his captain’s touch, it’s always there. Cap used to love that. Crave it. Now it feels like barbed wire wrapped around his heart.

The soldier hangs his head. Ashamed of the mission he just blew.

“C’mere,” Cap says, and holds out his hand.

With a painful desperation, the soldier springs to his feet and presses his cheek into Cap’s open palm. The soldier’s face is rough and scratchy, but Cap can’t imagine anything better than its feel.

“I’m sorry,” the soldier mumbles.

The soldier uses so few words as it is, and these ones seem perfectly designed to rip at Cap’s seams. But Pierce said—

Pierce _demanded._

Cap lets the soldier nuzzle his hand for a second more before rearing back and slapping the soldier. The force of it sends the soldier sprawling to the ground. Cap sucks in his breath, horrified. But isn’t this what Pierce wanted? He has to be that man—for both their sakes.

“Get up,” Cap spits.

The soldier glances up at him with wide blue eyes that burn and burn.

Cap flexes his hand, curls it into a fist. In the dread silence while he waits for the soldier to speak, to move, the rush of thoughts pours over him.

— _arms tight around each other, shh, it’ll be okay, don’t care what they say—_

He forces the thoughts away and seizes the soldier by the shoulder. “You think you deserve kindness? Praise? After what you did?”

In his mind, Pierce is smiling.

This time, when Cap strikes out, he imagines it’s Pierce’s face he’s smashing.

“I’m sorry,” the soldier whimpers, and slumps back to the ground.

Cap presses his boot between the soldier’s shoulder blades, forcing him down further. “Are you sure? Or were you just getting ahead of yourself, soldier? Couldn’t wait to get back to base. Is that it?”

The soldier gulps down air. “I wanted—”

“You. _You_ wanted.” Cap barks a bitter laugh. “You weren’t made to want.”

But that word— _made_ —it wedges in the corner of Cap’s mind. He hadn’t chosen it, but the moment he says it, he knows it for truth.

He forces it away. Cap’s led many an interrogation. He knows what it is to be cruel. All he has to do is imagine what the High Commander would do, and it comes effortlessly. Flows out of him, as if he’s just a vessel made for spilling out Hydra’s commands.

“You wanted me to fuck you. Is that it? Tell you what a good soldier you are. Make you feel worthy.”

The soldier swallows. “Yes,” he says softly.

Cap seizes the soldier by his weapons harness and hoists him to his feet. Presses him face-first against the wall and pins him there with his own weight. Chest to back, groin to ass, and Cap’s head swims.

“You don’t deserve it,” Cap says, because it’s what Pierce wants him to say. The words taste rusty with hate.

The soldier flinches. Despite himself, Cap is growing hard, his cock pressing against the cleft of the soldier’s ass. It was all he wanted, too. Not the mission. Not the kill. He wanted to be back at base, safe and alone with the soldier, shutting out the rest of Hydra for a few minutes or hours.

But now Pierce’s words have infected him, and they aren’t alone. Pierce is in Cap’s head, watching them, judging whether Cap is commanding enough. _Preserve the chain of command_. Cap clenches his teeth. “Beg for it,” he says. “Convince me.”

_C’mon, sweetheart, stop teasing me already and—_

Cap blinks, shakes his head, and presses harder against the soldier’s back. “ _Beg._ ”

The soldier sucks down a breath of air. “Please,” he whispers. “Please. It’s all I want—to serve you well. It’s all I’m good for. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry—”

Cap’s heart twists inside his chest. He wants to soothe the soldier, assure him he’s so much more than this weapon they’ve made—but is it true? Is he meant to be anything more?

“Please, I need you, I’m so sorry, please—”

_Please, sweetheart—_

“I’ll be so good—”

_I’ll be so good for you—_

_Steve—_

Cap leaps back as if he’s been burned and the soldier slumps against the wall. “What did you say?” he hisses. Was it in his head? Did the soldier say it? That word is twisting, twisting, tearing his thoughts apart.

_Steve_ —

The soldier turns his head to the side, wide-eyed, terrified. “I’m sorry—”

“No.” Cap holds up one hand as he backs away. Like he soldier’s a wild animal that might turn on him at any moment. Like the name he uttered is. _Steve._ He sees a narrow room, beige walls, an unkempt bed. He sees a boy stretched out before him, dark-haired, mischievous. He feels the sea breeze fluttering the curtains, kissing his bare skin. And as the boy reaches up for him, as their arms entwine and their lips brush by, he hears—

Cap presses the intercom, heart hammering in his chest. There’s a twitch behind his eye and a growing chorus in his head. “Prep the soldier for cryo,” he barks into the comm, though the words sound all distorted, like they come from someone else’s mouth.

And then he runs.


	6. 6

The soldier won’t meet his eyes. His gaze stays fixed on the truckbed as their squadron rolls out. Cap didn't schedule him for a mind “refresher” when they pulled him out of cryo—he couldn’t quite articulate why—but it was clearly a mistake. What had passed between them (what _had_ passed between them?) sat heavy in the soldier’s glare. Cap supposed that made sense; after all, for him, it had only been a matter of hours since the encounter, and not years. Cap wished he could have spent those years sleeping, too.

Instead he’d spent every waking moment turning a name over and over in his head, smoothing it down like a river stone. _Steve._ Too many unwelcome thoughts came bundled up with that name. Images of a woman setting down a steaming bowl of stew before him. Of a crowd giving it wild applause. And of the dark-haired boy who said it teasingly, fondly, lovingly, sweetly, desperately, terrified—

The soldier made a sound, but the muzzle Cap had placed on him stifled it. It had been the right choice.

Those eyes, though. He couldn’t cover up those eyes. Not when they looked at him like the eyes of the boy in his dreams.

Cap mentally kicked himself. There wasn’t any time for these thoughts. He needed his troops in perfect working condition, and that included himself. With Commander Pierce’s Project Insight launching soon, with their final putsch to wipe out resistance to Hydra’s reign once and for all—he couldn’t afford to be distracted.

For himself or the soldier both.

 

*

 

This was not exactly what Cap had in mind but he’ll take it, he’ll take it, anything to quiet the screaming in his brain.

The soldier’s hand caresses his cheek, pleading in his chilly eyes. Cap cups his hands around the soldier’s face. The muzzle is stiff and cold under his palms, but anything is better than hearing that name again. His thumbs brush the soft, plump line of the soldier’s cheeks where it peeks above the muzzle’s lip and be presses his lips to the soldier’s brow.

The soldier sighs, and it echoes inside the plastic chamber.

Cap presses his weight against the soldier, backing him against the storage closet wall. His hands fumble with the soldier’s uniform, with the buckles across his harness already undone. He runs his palms over smooth, well-muscled skin and groans into the soldier’s collarbone. Yes, this is what he needs to forget, to distract himself, to get back on task.

The soldier whimpers as Cap sinks lower and mouths at the firm ridges of the soldier’s abdomen. He tastes of salt and frostbite—like he’s never truly been warm. But Cap swirls his tongue over his skin, breathes at it, loses himself in the soldier’s soft sighs and tensing muscles and fingers threading through Cap’s hair.

Cap loses himself in the weight of the soldier’s cock inside his mouth, heavy and thick and his, all his.

He loses himself in the way the soldier’s hips twitch and his head thumps back against the wall as he laves his tongue against the soldier’s shaft.

He loses himself . . .

_“Stay with me,” he murmurs, arms tight around the other man. “Stay with me. I won’t lose you again.”_

_The man tightens a fist in his thermal shirt. “Please don’t leave me alone.”_

_He smiles; even in the cramped pup tent, they’re closer than they need to be, and he has no complaints. He presses the man onto his back, gently, kisses the dimple in his chin, the soft hairs of his chest, the crisp V of his waist. Peels back the waistband of the man’s longjohns, standard-issue olive green, and laps at the warm bronze skin below._

_“I’m not going anywhere,” he promises, sealing it with another kiss. “Never. Not without you, Buck.”_

The soldier cries out, the sound muffled and choked. Cap jolts back into himself, startled, as the soldier’s sweet taste, heated and bitter, spills down his throat. Cap swallows him down. He feels bloodless—lost and fuzzy, as if any moment he might evaporate.

Cap rocks back onto his heels and looks up at the soldier, eyes squeezed shut, chest heaving.

“Bucky,” Cap says, the word like a forgotten prayer.

The soldier’s eyes snap open.

“Bucky.” Cap’s whole body is vibrating, about to break apart. “That was your name. When you were—”

_When you were mine._

Cap wraps his hand around the soldier’s thigh. There’s blood under his fingernails, he realizes. Blood in the crevices of his leather fingerless gloves. But he can almost see it—a time when there was no blood. A time when there was a name. A boy wrapped in his arms. When they both belonged.

The soldier whimpers—decidedly more pitiful, now, than before. He’s still slumped against the wall, and sinking, sinking, BDUs shoved around his knees and his armored chestpiece splayed open like cracked ribs. He looks so vulnerable. Soft. Soft as the smiling, laughing boy in Cap’s memory.

Memory? Dream. Delusion.

No.

“Was that your name?” Cap whispers.

Tears brim in the soldier’s eyes. He shakes his head, over and over.

“You had a name. Before—before.” Cap winces. It hurts to reach back, to try to imagine a _before_. But there must have been something there. A time before Hydra came to power. He remembers conquering, but he can’t remember who or what they conquered. He can’t remember the start. Was he born in this armor, in these muscles, in this position of power? Was he born a symbol?

A face stares at him as if in a cracked mirror: himself, a painted black Hydra symbol across his chest.

The tears spill down the soldier’s face now, collecting along the edge of his muzzle. He mumbles something. _Hurts_ , maybe. It hurts.

Does it hurt him to try to remember, too?

Cap takes a deep breath; adjusts his erection, still painful, buried under layers and layers of uniform. He was selfish not to refresh the soldier when they woke him this time. He didn’t mean for it to hurt him.

To hurt either one of them.

It won’t be a mistake he makes again.


	7. 7

_“C’mon, Stevie, you’re killin’ me here.”_

_“Quiet, Buck. I only just got you back.” He grins up at him, across the smooth planes of Bucky’s stomach, and places another gentle kiss on Bucky’s hip. “I intend to savor this for all you’re worth.”_

_“I thought the Army was all about efficiency?” Bucky laces his fingers in Steve’s hair, lazy and content. “And it’s a captain’s job to keep his subordinates in top fighting shape . . .”_

_Steve muffles his laughter against Bucky’s thigh. His whole body is warm, radiant with sunlight, staving off the deep Alpine winter chill. “Sweetheart.” He licks a slow stripe across Bucky’s thigh toward his groin, then finally, finally, pauses at the base of his cock. “You look to be in great shape to me.” He lets the words gust hot over Bucky’s skin. “But I can give you a closer inspection . . .”_

 

Cap jolts awake with a gasp for air. His skin is tight with goosebumps and his mouth tastes metallic. He blinks a few times, trying desperately to reconstruct the fragments of his dream, but they vanish each time he looks directly at them. It’s like trying to hold onto smoke. There’d been a man—two men—there was a war—

He blinks again, but this time, all he sees is the face of the resistance fighter he last killed.

_“You’ll never be him,” the man screams. “You’ll never be half the man he was. You’re just a hollowed out shell, a monster—”_

_Cap silences him with a flick of his shield. It’s nothing he hasn’t heard before. The impotent ranting of the doomed. So many who still oppose Hydra’s reign after so many years, decades. As if there could be anything else._

_Was there ever anything else?_

A clatter in the corridor snaps his attention back to the present.

“Hey.” Cap pokes his head out of his quarters and glances toward the medical wing, in the direction of his noise. “What’s going on?”

He’s answered with a pained cry that he knows all too well.

Cap charges down the hall, bare feet pounding against the steel flooring. He’s in his workout pants and nothing else, but he doesn’t care. Nothing matters except the soldier. With a wordless shout, he bursts through the medical room doorway—

The soldier screams as he launches a rolling cart into the air. It crashes against the wall, narrowly missing the doorway Cap’s just launched himself through—and Rumlow, the Strike team leader. Rumlow glances at Cap and bursts into laughter.

“What the hell are you doing?” Cap demands. “Why’s he out of cryo?”

Rumlow glances toward his buddies. More faceless, nameless soldiers—Cap’s sure he knows their names, their call signs, but he can’t think straight. All he wants is to stop whatever’s hurting the soldier, whatever’s put him in such a rage.

The soldier looks at him from beneath the locks of dark hair plastered to his face with sweat, and his face crumples with a whimper.

Cap rushes toward him. “Hey. Hey, it’s okay.” The men laugh, but Cap ignores them; reaches for the soldier. “What’s going on?” he asks softly.

The soldier jerks back from him, wedging himself in the corner.

“C’mon, Cap,” one of the men slurs. Jack? John? “It ain’t nice not to share.”

More drunken laughter, but Cap barely hears it over the rush of blood in his ears. The world is tinged in red as he turns back toward them. “The fuck did you say?”

Rumlow shares another snicker with one of the men, then takes a long draw from the flask in his hand. “We all know what you do with the asset. Think you’re so fucking special. Hydra’s li’l poster boy!” He wiggles his hands. “If they only fucking knew. You’re a sick fuck.”

Pierce’s warning looms large in Cap’s thoughts. _I’ll put the bullet in the asset myself if this gets out._ “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He tries to say it as evenly as he can, but even to his own ears, he sounds hysterical.

“We’ve been stuck on base for two weeks without any pussy in sight,” Jack snarls. “Ain’t fair that you get to have all the fun.”

“C’mon, Cap. Let us play with your toy.” Rumlow laughs again, harsh and acidic. “You’re not anything special. Thinkin’ you’re better than us—”

“Don’t you fucking touch him.” Rumlow lunges forward, but Cap steps in front of the asset. His whole body is vibrating now, his anger awake and wild. He’s curled both hands into fists, and he’s a hair trigger away from putting one straight through Rumlow’s booze-flushed face. Cap knows the kind of damage he can inflict. He’s done it for Hydra a thousand, a hundred thousand times. But hurting a fellow team member—

The very thought of it tweaks some distant part of his brain, painful and sharp. But he could do it if he had to. He knows he could.

Rumlow stares him down for a hard minute, bloodshot eyes glassy, teeth bared. But then he rocks back and shrugs. “Okay, fine, Cap. Not that you could hurt me anyway—”

Cap’s fist crashes into his jaw and Rumlow’s head twists as he crumples to the ground.

The soldier whines. The other team members are shouting, frozen in place, until Cap looks up at them, and they all take a step back. Cap glances down. Rumlow’s still breathing, but a fine mist of blood pillows his head where he’s fallen and he’s missing more than one tooth.

“Take him to the infirmary,” Cap says, voice quavering. “Let him sleep it off.” He narrows his eyes. “And that goes for the rest of you, too.”

The Strike members grab Rumlow by the arms and drag him away as fast as they can in their current state, but Cap stays perfectly still, arms out to shield the soldier from them. His mouth tastes coppery with blood, as if he’s the one who got knocked out. There’s a dull roar in the back of his brain, but he doesn’t care, he doesn’t care about anything except that the soldier’s safe.

Cap glances over his shoulder at the soldier once he can no longer hear the other men down the hallway. The soldier is still shrunken in on himself, his arms quaking where they’re wrapped tightly around his body. His hair, damp from cryo, sticks to his face and drips from his nose and chin with each shudder.

“Hey,” Cap whispers. “Are you all right?”

The soldier peeks at him through wet locks of hair, those sad blue eyes wide.

“It’s okay,” Cap says, keeping his voice soft. He starts to open his arms, but then thinks better of it. “You’re safe now. I won’t let anyone hurt you.”

The soldier stares at him for a long time, and Cap’s throat squeezes tight. Maybe whatever bond they shared has been broken. Maybe those assholes did a deep memory wipe on him and all the instinct and trust they’ve built up over the decades is gone. Or maybe he just did the wrong thing.

But then the soldier shuffles toward him, face turned up, eyes closed, and he curls toward Cap. Asking a question without words.

Cap answers by wrapping his arms around the soldier and holding him for all he’s worth.

“I’m sorry,” Cap says, over and over, the words blending into a lullaby. Gradually, the soldier’s shivering slows and stops. Cap tips the soldier’s face toward him. He just wants to look into those eyes. Those eyes that stir up the dust and cobwebs in his mind. He takes a deep breath and braces himself.

“I have these . . .” Cap’s voice falters. “These thoughts. Memories, I think.”

The soldier tenses in his arms.

“Of you. Of us.”

“No,” the soldier breathes.

Cap loosens his hold on the soldier. “It’s okay. I was scared of them, too. Still am. But I look at you, and I see . . . I feel so much . . .”

He swallows. Emotion’s surging through him, raw and dangerous, needling at the corners of his eyes.

“I feel so much.”

“Stop it,” the soldier says through gritted teeth.

Cap drops his arms to his sides and steps back. He doesn’t want to hurt the soldier. Not like everyone else. He wants to give him space. Autonomy—now there’s a concept, something no one’s ever granted the soldier before. But at the same time, Cap has to know.

“Don’t you ever wonder what came before? Before the war, before Hydra came to power. Do you remember being young? A time when we weren’t . . .”

He gestures, uselessly, to the cold barracks all around them. The bleakness of it, industrial and deadened.

“I can’t,” the soldier says. “Please. I can’t.”

“I just want to know.” Cap clenches a fist, though all he wants is to reach for the soldier again. “I want to know who we were. _What_ we were.” He swallows, but can’t seem to find it in him to say what he really wants to say. _What we were to each other._

“Stop.”

The soldier shoves past him, toward the door. Cap leaps forward, but stops himself when he realizes he meant to block the soldier from leaving. He can’t do that. He can never take away his will again.

So he stands, cold and alone, his heart bloodied and raw, as the soldier runs away.


	8. 8

The soldier crawls into the storage cabinets and curls into a tight ball as the memories wash over him, drowning him.

_Steve laughs in disbelief, but his face turns redder and redder the longer he stares. Those high, fine cheekbones of his are flushed and his delicate brow is wreathed in sweat. The hallmark of one of Steve’s righteous tirades about to be unleashed—_

The soldier whimpers and hunches down, wishes he could shrink into himself, wishes he could shrink down to nothing at all.

_“Don’t you get it, Buck?” Steve shakes his head. “Everyone’s got to do their part. I can’t stand by and do nothing while the Nazis are committing these atrocities, while good people are laying down their lives so others might live—”_

It’s not true. It’s not even his captain—just some smaller, scrawnier version of him. Not a child, but someone else, maybe someone else entirely. Yet he’s got that same fire, that same commanding presence, that same face that the soldier wants to bow down and worship and do anything he can to see it smile—

_“But what about_ our _lives, Steve?” he asks. “What about this life we’ve built together?”_

_Steve folds his arms, pulling his hand just out of Bucky’s grasp as Bucky reaches for him. “What about it? It’s a fucking joke. You won’t even let me touch you in public. I can’t tell anyone how I really feel. When all I want is to shout it from the rooftops until everyone in Brooklyn knows what a lucky guy I am.”_

The soldier’s breath feels hot and bladed in his lungs.

_“I’m not saying it’s perfect.” Bucky’s throat closes up. “But at least we’re together. At least, at the end of the day, I can come home to you. I can be yours.”_

_Steve turns his head away from him, tears threatening to spill from his eyes. “Yeah, well, maybe if we’re fightin’ this war together, if we’re liberatin’ other people . . . Maybe we deserve better for ourselves, too.”_

The war. Their life before Hydra. The world his captain so desperately wants to believe existed. Is it real, or just a dream stitched together during endless frozen sleep? His captain, brave and determined as ever. Adoring as ever. And he remembers, he imagines, a time before when there wasn’t violence etched into his bones.

He remembers a time when his every waking thought wasn’t filled with the urge to obey.

The soldier flexes his hands, imagines the weight of his rifle in them. Drill down into his marrow and there are bullet trajectory calculations, wind variables, range charts. There’s the geometry of death, the access codes for murder. He’s killed—How many has he killed? Each mission it gets fuzzier and fuzzier, the missions all tamping down into strata of ice. And yet frozen beneath, beneath that hardened shell—

He has to remember. He has to find some way to break through.

“Soldier?”

There’s a stern rap at the cabinet door, and then it swings open. The soldier launches forward, mechanical arm first, and seizes the technician’s throat as he pulls himself out of the cabinet where he’s hid.

“Jesus!” the technician shrieks, jumping back. “Stand down, soldier!”

But there’s something broken in the soldier. He no longer feels compelled to obey. He grabs hold of a nearby pipe and wrenches it free from the wall with his left hand, and in a hiss of steam, brandishes it at the technician.

“What the fuck—He’s not listening—”

“There you are, soldier.”

The soldier’s head snaps up at the sound of his captain’s voice.

_—Steve—_

The technicians turn toward the captain in the doorway. Idiots. Turning their backs on the soldier, when he’s already been set in motion, when his only directive is self-preservation . . .

“Why is the asset out of cryo?” the first technician asks. “There’s no mission authorization on the logs.”

The soldier flinches. He remembers the other soldiers wrenching him from sleep, grabbing at him, fumbling with the machinery, sending shocks to his brain as they teased him with threats of what they wanted to do.

“He’s helping me with a training exercise,” his captain finally says.

A word floats through the soldier’s skull, and he grabs at it. “For Insight.”

That shuts the technicians up in a hurry. Even his captain looks at him, eyebrows raised. But the soldier shows nothing, says nothing more. Inside, his thoughts and instincts are a knotted ball of yarn.

Finally, one of the technicians speaks. “Then why is he—”

“Hey. Are you on my training team?” his captain asks. “Because if not, I really can’t see how it’s any of your concern.”

The technician stares at him, mouth flapping open.

“Come on, soldier.” The captain holds out one hand. “Let’s debrief and review the plan.”

The soldier slinks past the technicians and follows his captain down the barracks hall.

_Steve. Steve. Steve._

He turns the name over and over in his head, clutching it to him like a rosary.

And when his captain—when Steve—leads him into his barracks quarters, the look he gives the soldier says it all.


	9. 9

“I remember,” the soldier whispers.

His captain nods. “There was a time. A before.”

“But how do they . . . ?” The soldier gestures, futilely, to the air around him. “Why is it so hard to hold onto?”

“I don’t know what they did to me. How they keep it up, or if they do. But every time they pull you out of cryo, they . . .”

His captain chokes on his own words, and squeezes his eyes shut. Draws a steadying breath. The soldier finds himself reaching out, brushing warm flesh fingertips against his captain’s cheek. A tear trails down his captain’s cheek, but with a bitter laugh, he kisses the soldier’s palm.

“They wipe you. Electrical impulses.” He bites his lower lip and looks away from the soldier. “I watch them do it.”

The soldier makes a sound from somewhere deep inside him. He doesn’t know what it is he’s feeling, only that it’s too tight, it’s too much for him to hold onto right now.

“It’s supposed to help you focus on your mission, or so they always tell me. But I think they do it whenever you start to . . . to remember. When whatever they’ve done to you . . . starts to lose its hold.”

“But I do remember. Some.” The soldier blinks; he sees his captain, feeble and small, smiling and laughing and pulling him in for a kiss. Lazing beside him in bed as a summer breeze pours through their open window and kisses their bared skin.

He wants to remember more.

“You—this isn’t—the things we do. They make us do. Killing, betraying, crushing down all resistance—the blood we spill.” Another tear runs down his captain’s face, more determined this time. The soldier wants to kiss it away, remembers kissing those tears away, remembers the salty taste of them against hi Steve’s sweet skin. “It’s not who you were. I’m sure of that much,” his captain finishes.

The soldier leans forward. Closes his mouth on the apple of his captain’s cheek. And it’s everything he remembers, his lips against _Steve’s_ skin with just a flutter of his tongue, and plates are shifting inside him, realigning, stitching together and making him whole.

He wants to hold onto it. He’s trying. But the longer he holds tight to the memories, the more he remembers, too—

The screaming. Pain. Water and electricity and darkness and a metallic smell. Beating and shocking and starving the memories out of him. Drilling them away. Burning him down until nothing is left but a shriveled up, blackened match.

His captain cups his face and kisses the tip of the soldier’s nose. His thumb strokes forward, back, along the soldier’s cheek. For long minutes, they only stare at each other, each of them trying to hold on. “Who was I?” he finally asks.

The soldier swallows. “You were perfect,” he says.

His captain laughs, face flushing. “I remembering being . . . smaller.”

The soldier nods. That helps—that lets him lock on. Like hunting down a moving target. “You used to fit so perfectly in my arms.”

“And you were . . . such a charmer. You always had something clever to say.” His captain smiles as another tear falls. “But you were mine, all mine.”

“I still am,” the soldier whispers.

His captain kisses him with salt on his lips. Gentle, jaw soft, hand stroking the soldier’s cheek, but then pressing, firmer now, parting the soldier’s mouth with his tongue and licking inside. He’s warm and soothing like sunlight, lighting the soldier up inside, melting and thawing the last of the frost. He’s everything the soldier didn’t know he needed, everything they tried to make him forget.

He refuses to forget now.

“Steve,” the soldier says.

His captain—his _Steve_ —looks at him, hand cradling the soldier’s head. His lips are pinked from kissing, plump and delicate. He smiles so hard it threatens to crack.

“My Bucky.”

And then they’re two boys, just barely men, limbs entwined on a Brooklyn night. They’re two soldiers, hearts pounding as one as they warm each other through the snowfall. They’re two flowers from the same root, forever entangled.

“I remember this.” Steve runs one hand along the side of the soldier’s torso. “Being with you. Finding solace in you. I think I always remembered this, somehow.”

The soldier nods and pulls Steve closer. “I always remember you.”

This time, they kiss with desperation, trying to pull memories from one another, trying to lose themselves in the tide. Steve’s hands caress Bucky’s waist and ease open his BDUs as Bucky pulls Steve’s t-shirt away. He kisses Steve’s perfect chest, the sculpted, firm muscles, the ridged expanse, the golden skin he could never forget. Steve teases Bucky’s cock free and strokes him, loose but determined, as he steers them both toward Steve’s bed.

Bucky melts under him. He sheds every last trace of frost. The fog clears and he remembers, he remembers the shape of Steve’s touch, the weight of Steve inside him, the taste of Steve’s name on his lips as they move together, as they live, as they live.

Steve holds him after, clings to him like he might drift under and never surface again. He fears he might. If the emptiness returns, if they _empty_ him again, what will happen to everything he’s recovered? What will happen to him? Have they played this same setting out before, only to have it wiped away? He curls into Steve, their bodies slick and spent, and closes his eyes against the coming morning. But sleep doesn’t come. He feels a potent mix of hope and dread, and it’s a coin flip as to which will win.

“We have to stop it,” Steve says. Arm tight around Bucky’s waist. Eyes staring up at the ceiling. “Project Insight.”

Bucky nods without knowing why. It’s just another codename, another mission, another murder.

“We’ve caused enough suffering. We’ve let them use us enough.”

Bucky nods, stifling a whimper against Steve’s chest. He can’t remember the things he wants to. But worse, he can’t forget all the rest.

“If Insight launches . . . there will be no resistance left.” Steve swallows, chest rising sharply beneath Bucky’s face. “It’s the least we can do.”

“It won’t undo everything,” Bucky mutters. “We can’t bring back the people we’ve killed.”

Steve shakes his head. “But we can make sure it ends here.”


	10. 10

Steve spends two hours in the training room, lifting the heaviest things he can find, grinding the treadmill treads to dust beneath his soles. Each recovered memory is an adrenaline jolt, a pang in his heart that he can never heal.

Captain Hydra. What a fucking joke. What a sick, twisted lie, and he bought it, for decades on end. He remembers telling Bucky, once, that the only good Nazi was a dead Nazi, and look what he became. What they made him—not that it matters. He should have been stronger. He shouldn’t have obeyed.

_I’ll follow you, Buck. Wherever you go, I’ll follow. I won’t let them take you again._ He can see it now, the valley, the bitter snow, the rattling train. Bucky fell, and he jumped, because he promised: _Never again._

But then there were the chains and the drugs—so many they had to administer them constantly, even then only barely managing to keep him sedate—and then the torture, the endless questions, the water and the shocks and the breaking down of everything Steve, bit by bit. There was a time—hours, days, years?—where they marked him as Hydra’s, made him stare at himself like that in a mirror, stare at it until he’d answer who he served. He could see himself no other way.

He would always be that man, broken, defeated, black paint dripping down his cursed ever-healing chest. He would always be Captain Hydra. He could never scrub away that stain.

All he can do is let it scab over.

All he can do is make sure the others—the rest of Hydra—bleed, too.

 

*

 

The next few weeks are a blur of preparations, mission briefs, and so many meetings with High Commander Pierce that turn Steve’s stomach. He has to take a shower after, let the blistering hot water burn away his hatred, his disgust, at what he’s let himself become. He knows it’s not fair—he doesn’t blame Bucky for being made into a weapon—but still he blames himself for being so weak.

Yet in the scalding water, he hatches a plan.

“We must make the world safe for Hydra,” Pierce says. “No more revolt. Only subservience. Only order and strength. When Supreme Commander Schmidt returns to us, we want him to find Earth better than when he left.”

“When he returns from conquering the other worlds, you mean,” Steve says.

Pierce looks at him oddly, then shakes his head. “You’ve never had a problem with our methods before.”

It turns Steve’s stomach, but he answers: “And I don’t have a problem now.”

What he has, he thinks, he _hopes_ , is a solution.

 

*

 

_Longing._ Bucky—the soldier—looks at Steve with a pained, thousand-yard stare as he slumps back in the chair.

_Rusted._

_Seventeen._

They were just kids, once. Dumb and hopeful and in love. Steve can never give that back to him. But maybe, he can atone.

_Daybreak._

A new beginning.

_Furnace._

_Nine._

_Benign._

They may both be poisoned now, but they will find another way.

_Homecoming._

_One._

_Freight car._

The soldier looks at him expectantly as Steve snaps the codebook shut.

“Leave us,” Steve says to the medical technicians. They smirk as they slink off—they know, Pierce knows, everyone knows—but Steve just lets them. He’s not here for that today. But what he’s really here for—

“I have a new mission for you, soldier.”

The soldier raises his head, proud.

“You’re going to kill High Commander Pierce.”


	11. 11

Captain Hydra stands at attention, hands folded behind his back, as he surveys New Berlin far below. The shuffling workers, the Hydra patrol cars, the factories spewing smoke—he’s responsible for all of it. This was his city once, he thinks; it was here he first found his voice, his courage, his love for Bucky that refused to be smothered down. And now he has made it into a prison. He has punished everyone who ever dared to feel the hunger for justice and freedom he once felt.

“Champagne?”

He turns to face High Commander Pierce, holding a flute out to him. It seems only days ago that Pierce was a fresh-faced ops strategist, coordinating missions from the safety of High Command as he sent Hydra’s death squads out to quell revolt.

“You know it doesn’t do anything for me,” Steve says.

Pierce shrugs, then downs the flute for himself. “You should loosen up, Captain. Everything we’ve worked to build with Hydra—it’s all about to come to a head. You deserve a little celebration.”

Bile rises in the back of Steve’s throat. “I’m just doing my job.”

Reflected in the glass, Pierce narrows his eyes. For a long minute, he says nothing; just watches as the shadows of the massive helicarriers pass over the streets below. Project Insight. A new evolution in Hydra’s ability to control the populace by systematically eliminating those most likely to pose a threat to order. Criminals, revolutionaries, antisocials, dissidents—and on and on the list goes. Profiling, Pierce called it, as if the sum of a person could be stored in neat little boxes of data. An algorithm to predict what elements made a person unable to be controlled.

“It’s a fascinating thing, the algorithm,” Pierce says, as if following Steve’s train of thought. “Did you know that according to available data, it placed you on the list? The asset as well, though that should come as no surprise. The algorithm doesn’t think either one of you know how to follow the rules.”

Cold sweat trails down Steve’s spine. “What are you saying, sir?”

“Oh, I overrode it. Made an exception. For this round, at least.” He smiles, all teeth and no warmth. “I think just about anyone can be made to comply, given the proper incentive. The proper conditions. But it takes effort. Most people just aren’t worth the investment.”

“But I am,” Steve says carefully. His heart is jackhammering in his ribs, but he can’t let Pierce see it on his face. “The soldier and I are.”

“You are both a . . . special case,” Pierce concedes. “For now, the benefits outweigh the cost.”

“The cost,” Steve echoes.

Pierce nods, but doesn’t say anything more.

A sharp knock at the door turns both their heads. Pierce punches a key code on the panel closest to him, and the doors swing open to permit a handful of guards, escorting two more Hydra commanders. Steve doesn’t realize he’s holding his breath until his lungs burn; he lets it out in a careful exhale.

From the cluster of guards and officials, the soldier looks up at him.

Time stretches between them, painfully taut. The soldier’s gaze is empty and cold. Does he remember? Can he remember again? Wipe after wipe after wipe, Bucky resurfaced, but it took so much to bring him back. Does it get harder every time?

—But it doesn’t matter. Shouldn’t matter, at least. An order is an order. And the soldier has never disobeyed.

Steve manages a stiff nod to acknowledge him, then turns back to Pierce and the other commanders.

Words—that’s right. Pierce has been talking, everything blurring together into a hazy drone. They’re looking at Steve, smiling, expecting him to react to something, but all he can manage is a painful nervous laugh. Pierce stares at him a second longer, but they return to their talk.

_Focus, Steve. Just a little longer._

A crackle of static across the comms. Steve blinks to clear his vision, strains to hear the words. “—is online. Weapons systems are online and ready—”

“— _Now_ , soldier _—”_ Steve shouts.

The soldier charges forward, gun unsheathing in one fluid motion as he shoves one of the commanders out of the way. But Pierce is just staring at him, calm, smiling even. With a laugh, he shakes his head.

“Oh, Captain. You forget who created you both. _Sputnik_ ,” Pierce says.

The gun clatters from the soldier’s hand as his muscles seize. There’s a scream tearing out of Steve—but he’s too late.

With a groan, the soldier crumples to the ground.


	12. 12

“Take the captain into custody,” Pierce barks at the guards. All of them armed—some pointing their weapons at Steve, others at the collapsed soldier on the ground.

Steve lurches forward, but before he can reach Bucky, he’s hit with a powerful surge of electricity. Enough to kill any man who isn’t him. The guards batter him with their stun batons until he crashes to his knees. The serum does nothing to diminish the pain he’s feeling—it only means he feels it all the more, crackling behind his eyeballs, rattling his teeth, setting all his nerve endings on fire. He slumps to one side as the current courses through him, again and again.

“How stupid you must think me,” Pierce says, towering over him. “With the Insight program, you’ve outlived your usefulness. You and the soldier both. We tried creating the perfect soldiers—the leader and the follower each—and you did your best. But it isn’t enough.”

Steve stretches toward his boot—toward the knife he wears there. But as he moves, another jolt strikes him.

“I used to look up to you. All those Captain Hydra comics when I was a kid . . . But the sad truth is, you’re just a puppet. A broken tool.” He snorts. “You should’ve left all that hope and courage back in the shell of the broken man you used to be. There’s no place for them in this world.”

The man he used to be. Steve clenches his jaw as the electricity wraps around him once more. His brain screams out in pain as he makes a fist, as he bunches his muscles up, as he readies himself, as he swallows back the decades-old memories of the scared but fearless boy he once was.

“I’m . . . still . . . him.”

Energy flows around him, swallows him up, as he bounds to his feet. His skin feels like it’s splitting open. But he’s going to take Pierce with him. He’s going to take every last one of them down. As his knuckles crash into Pierce’s jaw, the electricity leaps and arcs. It’s setting his blood on fire. But he can’t stop. He pounds and pounds and pounds. For Bucky. For himself. For every person he’s hurt, he’s killed, he’s silenced. For every time he wasn’t strong enough to stop it. For every last member of Hydra and every last person they’ve oppressed.

He pulls his fist away from the bloody mess of High Commander Pierce’s face, blood and brain clinging to him, and turns toward the men trying to desperately shock him still.

They drop the shock batons and run.

Steve gasps for air as the last crackle of fire wracks through him. Draws a ragged breath. Then reaches for Bucky, still crumpled on the ground.

“Buck,” he whispers. “Bucky, please. You have to wake up.” Steve takes a deep breath. “You have to remember.”

But the only response he receives is the crackle of static on the comms once more.

“Commander? Commander Pierce? Awaiting further instructions.”

Steve staggers onto his hands and knees. His muscles are spasming, cramping up as he crawls toward the console. He bites down hard on the screams of agony he wants to make as he presses the transmit button.

“This is Captain Hy—” Steve winces. “This is Captain America. Commander Pierce has been relieved of his post.”

A stretch of confused silence. “Wait, who is this?”

“I have a new targeting list for you.” He cycles through the console; selects a group of profiles. The Hydra High Command. “Transmitting now.”

“What about the previous targets, sir?”

“Disregard.”

Steve slides back to the floor. Black spots surface in his vision, pain wrapping its searing arms around him. He has to stay conscious. He has to make sure . . .

“Targeting list received. Proceeding now.”

A figure looms toward him. Black and silver and cold, icy cold.

“Steve,” Bucky says.

Steve stretches a hand out, but his bones feel like they’re burning from the inside.

Bucky stoops down before him. “Let me carry you this time.”


	13. Epilogue

It isn’t hard for them to find the leaders of the resistance: theirs were the names at the top of the original Insight targeting list. Steve insists on meeting with all of them to get a feel for their personalities, their ideals. One, a former Hydra soldier, stands out above the rest—a Nicholas Fury, rugged and stern and determined above all else to never let the many arms of Hydra take root again.

Fury offers them a place in the rebuilding, but Steve only asks for some solitude for a time. They both have half a life to remember, to rebuild. _Can’t do you much good if I can’t even remember who I am_ , he says, though Fury assures him they’ve already done more than enough.

 

*

 

It starts with a fistful of jagged shards of memories.

A kiss, a promise, a fall into darkness.

They sit side by side on a rooftop, New Berlin-New New York at their backs and the sea before them, a warm breeze teasing their hair and kissing their skin. Bucky remembers a night like this a million lives ago. (He remembers other nights on rooftops, too, a rifle butt wedged against his shoulder, but he lets those memories drift away.) Bucky remembers a fierce man at his side, his anger and righteousness outsized. But the outsized man next to him now, quiet and softly smiling, still suits him just fine.

“We may never remember everything,” Bucky says, as his head falls against Steve’s shoulder. He wraps his metal arm around Steve’s waist with a faint metal whir that he’s learning not to hate.

Steve waits a minute before answering, “We may never forget some things, either.”

Bucky slips his free hand under Steve’s chin. Tips it up towards him. Steve’s eyes are soft and so blue, blue as the water beyond, and he knows he’ll never forget the way it feels like the dawn whenever they turn his way.

“I can’t lose you again,” Steve whispers. “I can’t lose myself again.”

 _Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes._ He remembers chanting it over and over in his head. He remembers clinging to his name, to thoughts of Steve, to the men they used to be. It wasn’t enough to stop the horrors. It wasn’t enough to protect them. But it was never really gone. They could never burn that out.

“I’ve promised you that before, and I was wrong. I won’t promise it again.” Bucky’s voice wavers. “But we found our way back to each other all the same.”

Steve manages a pained smile, and it hurts Bucky’s heart so much, all he can do is kiss it away.

He pushes Steve flat onto the roof beneath him, and works their mouths together, a taste like sea salt and fresh air and freedom on their tongues. Steve’s body is solid and heavy beneath him, and his fingertips remember, even the metal ones—they remember every curve and plane of Steve, every hollow and soft stretch that elicits a shivering moan.

Bucky remembers how it sounds to make Steve gasp, to make Steve cry out for more. He remembers how it feels to lose himself inside of Steve and never want to find his way out. He kisses Steve’s throat as Steve arches up, cries beneath him, as they move together as one. Together, they’re more than just memories, than their crimes, their suffering.

They’re ready to make new ones.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> on tumblr: [The Drunk Soldier](http://thedrunksoldier.tumblr.com) & [Bohemienne](http://starandshield.tumblr.com)


End file.
